


Satellites

by kenaz



Category: Duran Duran, Duran Duran (Music Videos)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Bandslash, Cold War, Dystopia, M/M, music video
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenaz/pseuds/kenaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silence, Simon learns, is complicity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Satellites

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stellarmeadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarmeadow/gifts).



> Firstly, this story is not RPS so much as it is an AU based on the video for New Moon on Monday. The video, for the uninitiated, can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z5mfocBMHU
> 
> Secondly, I am completely aware that some of my technical innovations (!) relating to pirate radio are, erm...thoroughly incorrect. I ask the reader to kindly suspend their disbelief.

"Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy --common clay, if you like --eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others --the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes."

Jean Anouilh, _Antigone_

 

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."

\- George Orwell,_ 1984_

 

 

~ () ~

 

 

"_Bonan matenon, _kamerado Le Bon_._"

Simon bristled at the unexpected voice, jerking his head around to find himself at eye-level with the service belt of a State Security officer. Above the black canvas jacket and below the black peaked cap, he found the smug, self-satisfied expression he had begun to believe StateSec distributed with the uniform. His hackles rose-- the presence of the Darkwatch was enough to set anyone on edge, but he had been so intent on the train wreck of a rehearsal playing out on the stage that he hadn't heard anyone come up behind him. But then, that's what the Darkwatch did, wasn't it? They lurked.

"Good morning." Simon's curt delivery and refusal to use Esperanto-- the official tongue of the Unified State – earned a dark look from the officer, but when the man replied, he replied in English. 

"Kamerada Szabo wishes to speak with you. She is waiting upstairs in the director's office."

A summons to anyone's office rarely boded well; even less so now. "Why?"  
   
The man's jaw stiffened -- unaccustomed, perhaps, to answering questions rather than asking them. "That is for her to say. Come with me."

On stage, the director barked frantically at the actors, his voice quavering. The Kommissar of Arts sat in the house with a StateSec kommandant, and Darkwatch goons dotted the rows behind him like the audience to an execution-- no doubt the reason for the director's frenetic modulations. Simon could not see the Kommissar's expression from his perch in the dress circle, but he imagined it would be inscrutable and cool.

He had no other option, so he rose and turned. The guard's gloved hand jabbed him hard in the sternum as he attempted to pass.

"Papers."

A muscle in Simon's jaw twitched. He pulled them from the inner pocket of his coat and handed them over without remark. The guard made a show of studying them, matching the photograph to his face and reviewing his permissions. He began to hand them back, but as Simon reached for them, he snatched them just out of reach, then turned and walked away: a game, a reminder that he was here at the pleasure of stronger and more vicious men than he.

The lighting director stood at the control board, anxiously splitting his attention between the stage and Simon. Simon looked at him as he passed, and the man quickly returned his eyes to the board, busying himself with his dimmer switches. The house lights rose briefly, then fell.

Plucked from a provincial conservatory as a "promising prospect," Simon didn't flatter himself that he had been awarded a position in the State Theatre based on talent alone. Promising he may have been, but more importantly, he was pliant: he hadn't voted when elections had still been held, hadn't given any money to subversive groups, nor been seen at any rallies. One might do a thorough sweep of his credit card history and find that he had bought nothing more alarming than a few records on the Approved Listening List: he had kept his nose clean. Politics, he had long ago decided, should be left to other people-- he only wanted to immerse himself in his art and keep his arse out of the fire. And if 'art' now meant nothing more than propaganda pantos scrubbed clean of any color or character, any suggestion or subtext... well, then, he'd just need to be a better actor to make them appealing.

Saskia Szabo-- _kamerada_ Szabo, they now called her-- had emerged from origins even more obscure than his own: some said she had been a prostitute in one of the settlements, others, that she had been a member of the Resistance who had turned her coat and informed on her erstwhile friends. _Kamerada_, indeed. Well, whatever she had been, she was now the mistress of the StateSec kommandant scrutinizing the rehearsal with the Kommissar downstairs.

The position of henchman's whore had granted her quite a few liberties, and apparently enough State scrip to flit about with no real job (beyond summoning understudies to offices for god only knew what reason), in tight skirts and leggings and well-coiffed hair, and those who complained about it got shunted off for "retraining" at a Reeducation Centre out in the hinterlands. Simon didn't think on it; it didn't do to dwell. What business was it of his if someone got too mouthy with the wrong people?  Keep your head down and your chin up. Don't complain about people or things over which you have no control. Spout Unified State mottos like gospel. _You are an actor_, he had told himself a hundred times before, _play the role they've assigned you, and do it well_. It hardly mattered if you believed it or not, or even if you understood it, so long as you could regurgitate it with a smile.

The guard led him to the second floor where a warren of offices and workrooms blossomed weed-like from a central corridor cluttered with decommissioned props. Only the director's office at the far end still possessed a door. Simon looked each way he passed. In the open rooms, men and women hunched over desks, redacting scripts with marker pens and drafting scenery. One man looked up from his work and gave him a nod -- either of greeting or of solidarity, Simon didn't know which -- before returning to his task. He wondered if the man knew something he didn't. With each step, the corridor seemed to stretch on indefinitely, and the out-of-synch duet of his footfalls and the guard’s echoed ominously in his ears. When they reached the door, he lifted his hand to knock and hesitated, his fist hanging in the air, a stunted gesture of defiance.

"Come in, kamerado Le Bon."

He looked up. A closed-circuit television camera had been mounted high in the corner trained on the spot where he stood. _Of course._ The Darkwatch man thrust his papers back at him and faded back into the corridor like a shadow.

Inside the office – a dressing room, recently repurposed – kamerada Szabo posed on the edge of a table, appraising him through smoky eyes, crossing her legs demurely and throwing back her shoulders to accentuate her small, pert breasts. Cheap bangles gathered in clusters around each wrist, making a jaunty plastic jangle when she moved her arms. _Sorry, little bird, but you're not my type_. _Ah, but that's the sort of thing a smart man doesn't talk about anymore, isn't it?_  He wondered if she planned on chatting him up, and what he would do if she did. On the one hand, he could hardly refuse, yet on the other, he'd probably end up a conveniently 'missing' person if he didn't. He couldn't imagine a Darkwatch kommandant being inclined to share his toys. _Just close your eyes and think of England_, he counseled himself darkly. But there was no England. Not anymore.

"Shut the door." Her voice held an impatient edge, like a knife blade keen to cut. "_Now_, kamerado."

Simon did as he was told.

"I have good news for you," she announced airily, shifting through a stack of files on the table and picking one, seemingly at random. "The Kommissar of Arts has commissioned a new play. A very _important_ play. Officially, auditions will take place in December. Unofficially, you are under consideration for the male lead. A very heroic character, I'm told-- a warrior for the Unified State."

Simon made a quiet snort of derision. Auditions here had never been more than a formality; the Kommissar of Arts hand-picked his casts based on which members of the company were in favor with him at the moment, and people rarely stayed in favor long. Understudies waited, perpetually prepared, for the late-night, congratulatory phone call that meant one of their colleagues had found themselves in need of "retraining."  Sometimes deposed favorites returned to the company, thin, glassy-eyed and edgy. Sometimes they didn't. 'Sent to a regional theatre' was the explanation usually given, but no-one ever asked where those theatres were.

"But this discussion is premature,” she went on. “You are needed for a more urgent matter first." her eyes flicked up to him, cold and shrewd. Clearly, seduction was not the order of the day; a small mercy. "There has been chatter in the village." She flipped open the folder and picked through its contents with feigned curiosity before closing it again and rotating it until he could see the letters and numbers on its label. Not that the label gave him any indication of what it contained. "We believe that a demonstration will occur soon. A man named John Taylor is a key figure in this demonstration. I want you to get to know him. Get information from him."

Simon's eyes widened. "You've made a mistake. I'm not a _spy_\--"

She pushed the dossier abruptly toward him. It sat on the desk between them like a ticking bomb. "I know what you are," she said. Her voice dripped with innuendo. She flicked open the folder again, revealing a stack grainy surveillance photos. Simon felt his stomach plummet.  Each shot, clearly identifiable, showed him leaving Late Bar, or Medazzaland, or The Tiger. "I know that you are a queer." she drew out each syllable. "And you were a regular patron of homosexual bars in the city centre before StateSec shut them down. Your midnight antics may have been acceptable _then_, but StateSec doesn’t look so kindly on them _now_.”

"If you know about that, then you've already got me up against a wall," he bit out, hoping anger in his tone carried over prickle of unease climbing his spine like gooseflesh.

She only twisted her lips up in a semblance of a smile, pulled a photo from the pile, and dangled it between her fingers. "You'd know all about getting up against a wall, wouldn't you?"  She released her grasp and the photo fell, sweeping a wide arc through the air before coming to rest on the floor by his feet.

"Where did you get those?" he demanded. "Who took them, and why?"

She shrugged, insouciant.  "That's not germane to our conversation. In any case, all StateSec wants right now is information. Let the children have their little tantrum. StateSec doesn't care about a little bit of shouting. In fact, they are happy to show the world that they will entertain the concerns of the people. They only want to make sure that order is maintained and no one is hurt."

His mind replayed clips of old news broadcasts, of a representative of the Unified State shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher in front of 10 Downing Street in a display of, well, _unity, _he supposed. Six weeks later, Number 10 had been renamed the Ministry of Unification, Thatcher was gone and presumed dead, and the Royal Family had been whisked off to Canada to live in exile-- hardly an example of entertaining the concerns of the people. "Why should I believe you?"

"If StateSec wanted these people imprisoned or... neutralized, they would have been taken care of long ago. StateSec only wants to be apprised of further developments. To preserve order."

"So... I stick my neck out and you don't hand these over, is that it?" Anger surpassed common sense, and he only barely held his tongue against the tirade he felt brewing. "With all due respect, _kamerada_, I am afraid I will have to decline." He turned to go, a cold sweat breaking down his back.

"They have my father! Please, kamerado-- _Mister_ Le Bon."

The sudden outburst stalled him with his hand on the doorknob. Her earlier calm and control had fled; the anguish on her face might have given him pause... but the Darkwatch enjoyed testing people’s loyalty. Fail the test, end up in a Reeducation Center. Or worse. "Shouldn't you be taking that up with your lover?"

She shot him a glare and raked a hand through her hair. Her bangles slid down her arms, revealing wine-colored bruises, the sort he imagined handcuffs would make, or shackles. He couldn't decide if that made the nature of her relationship with the kommandant more clear to him, or if it only muddied the waters further. "Why," she replied in a voice devoid of any emotion, "do you think I became involved with him in the first place? I found out too late that he can't help me. Or won't.

"So you see--" she recovered her poise and gave him a steady, determined look "– we all have secrets."  Her fingers flitted across on the cover of the dossier. "I have neither the time nor the inclination to play games.  I don't care about your private activities; I care only about getting my father back." She bent to retrieve the photograph from the floor, replaced it in the dossier, and slapped the folder closed. "Information is currency. You would do well to remember that." She shoved the file into a leather rucksack. "Now, I ask you: please. Will you help me?"

Indecision immobilized him.  Indecision, and stark, white fear. Ahead of him on the wall hung a black and red poster bearing the logo for the new State Theatre, subtle as a swastika. On the floor lay its predecessor in a bent frame behind shattered glass: Jean Anouilh's _Antigone_. He wondered if it would ever play in this theatre again. Or in any theatre.

"Wait," he said.

After all, it wasn't as if he had a choice.

 

~ () ~

 

The motorbike roared down the open road, wind cutting straight to the bone through Simon's jacket, but the chill exhilarated him. He couldn't recall the last time he had left the city centre. Now the State monitored all traffic in and out and rarely granted travel permits. Nearly all private vehicles had been confiscated, anyway-- a rule that apparently didn't extend to mistresses of the StateSec elite.The sheer thrill of speed and a change of vistas had come as such a welcome anodyne to Simon that he could almost overlook his resentment at kamerada Szabo's obvious largess.

But as the village came into view, exhilaration faded into unease. Every kilometre or two, an outpost of the Darkwatch stood in silent menace, an omnipresent reminder that the villages were not like the city centre. The city and its luxuries – such as they were-- were for those who cooperated. Those with questionable loyalties or bad habits got penned up here, remote from other settlements and well-contained. Half-timbered houses and ancient battlements should have looked like pictures out of a tourist's guidebook, but they seemed to Simon neither quaint nor charming now, and the medieval architecture was just that: _medieval_. Walls, after all, didn't only exist to keep people out. Sometimes, they existed to keep people in.

They rolled to a stop at the final roadblock, the grille of a Black Maria proffering a malevolent metal smile from the verge. Four Darkwatch yobbos leered openly at kamerada Szabo; she looked them in the eye with indifference when she handed over their papers, and the guards returned them after a cursory glance. Either the documents she had provided were legitimate, or an exquisite forgery; otherwise, they would have been stopped on the road long before. An officer stamped them with the red 'X' meaning they could come and go from the village at will.

She brought him to a little café on a corner near the village square where the glass in the windows had the pale amber patina of age and cigarette smoke, and the floorboards had been worn smooth and shiny by the passage of feet and time. An unkempt man at the bar tracked their movements with wild, suspicious eyes; a grandmother nursed a glass of wine in the corner, her eyes lost in thought. She nudged him toward a table in the corner, but Simon stopped short when he saw the two men seated there. One was an impish bloke with a leather cap and ponytail... the other was the fellow from the theatre, the one who had nodded at him earlier that day. He wondered if kamerada Szabo had known about him; most likely, she had. So why hadn't _he_ been put to this task, Simon wondered resentfully. Perhaps he had no secrets that could be as conveniently manipulated as his own.

The disheveled man reeled by them like a wayward lorry, jostling Simon about on his feet. The distraction didn't prevent him from noticing the two men entering surreptitiously through an interior door near the bar. One was short and tarted up in a way one might have thought would attract too much of the wrong sort of attention, and the other was – _bloody hell_ \-- tall and withy with a chiseled jaw and curving lips and a flash red driving glove. If he’d seen a man like that at Late Bar, he thought with a pang of regret, he would have sharked him in a heartbeat. Those days – those _nights_ – seemed like they had sprung from another universe now. In a sense, they had. He watched the man maneuver through the room, joining the others at the corner table.

"I cannot stay,” Saskia whispered in his ear. “You are on your own now." She pushed past him and made a hurried exit from the pub, leaving him abruptly alone in utterly foreign territory.

Choking down his apprehension, he approached the table. The men looked up at him with expressions ranging from curiosity to outright hostility. He addressed the nodding man from the theatre. "I'm looking for Mr. Taylor." He hoped his deliberate use of the old honorific would allay their obvious distrust.

"Which Mr. Taylor?" the man with the ponytail piped up, his cheeky tone belying the flint-edge of suspicion in his eyes. "_I'm_ Mr. Taylor..." He hitched his thumb at the fellow from the theatre "..._He's_ Mr. Taylor...” He pointed toward the fit lad with the glove at the table's end. “...That one down there is Mr. Taylor..."

The man in eyeliner gave a snort of laughter.

"I suppose you're Mr. Taylor, too."

This only made the men snicker louder.

"No," Eyeliner drawled, "actually, I'm not."

Simon felt his face going red, as much from anger as from embarrassment. "I'm looking for _John_ Taylor."

The nodder drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "Gentlemen, this--" he gestured with his head toward Simon "--is Simon Le Bon. He works at the State Theatre."

After a bit of muttering, Red Glove spoke, sprawling in his chair as he began. "So, Simon Le Bon, what do you do at the State Theatre?" The tart mockery in his tone set Simon immediately on the defensive.

"I'm an actor. Or rather, I'm an understudy for the company."

"Are you good?"

"Pardon?"

The man jeered and narrowed his eyes, smirking nastily out of one side of his mouth. "Are you a _good_ actor, kamerado Le Bon?"

"If I were," he replied, hoping to disarm him if he couldn't stare him down, "I wouldn't be an understudy."

Red Glove laughed, but the sound contained no humor and quickly died away. "So, why are you looking for John Taylor, Simon Le Bon, bad actor?"

Simon endeavored not to show just how maddening the entire exchange had become. "Look, I know you're planning a demonstration, and I'd like to be involved."

The men exchanged glances. The Nodder from the theatre leaned across the table and whispered something in Red Glove's ear. Whatever he said turned the man's face instantly stony. "I'm sorry," he returned, looking not the least bit so, "but I have no idea what you're talking about." Then he gave Simon his back, effectively shutting down all communication.

Undaunted, Simon pressed on. "I can do whatever needs doing. Pass out handbills. Make banners. Run messages. I want to help."

Only Red Glove looked up. The other three studiously ignored him. "I don't know what you're talking about, _kamerado_ Le Bon," he repeated pointedly, his dark eyes locking with Simon's, unblinking, unyielding. Simon felt a flutter of lust tinged with foreboding somewhere between the pit of his stomach and his groin.

"My papers are good for travel in and out of the village, and I have a motorbike." One final gambit. "You might need someone who can come and go freely, and--"

"Oi." Ponytail canted his head in the direction of the door. A Darkwatch patrol had come into the café. All conversation immediately ceased.

"Curfew," one of the officers announced briskly. "You have one half-hour to return to your homes. This establishment is now closed."

With a low chorus of grumbling, people rose from their seats and gathered their things. Simon watched them go, wondering what he should do now. When he turned his head, Red Glove was gone.

 

~ () ~

 

The sun set early at this time of the year, and a chill rose quickly in the wake of its descent. Simon wandered the streets in the short time that was allotted him before returning to the grim little pension kamerada Szabo had arranged (paid up three months in advance in State scrip to deter any prying from the landlord). The night was darker here without brightly-lit marquees or window displays, without the trawling headlamps of creeping patrol cars. Even the windows of people’s homes were dark, as if they dared not attract attention to themselves by lighting their rooms. Only the diffuse spots of Darkwatch's torches and the sulky moon hunkering in the sky like a turned shoulder lit the streets. He turned toward an archway leading under the body of a building, trying to tune out the distant sound of a shout followed by a muffled scream. He had already seen people knocked to the ground by men with cudgels and eager boots. He had endeavored not to look, but to just keep walking.

He was utterly unprepared for the arm that caught him around the throat. He struggled instinctively to free himself, but had no leverage. In an instant, his assailant had grabbed one of his wrists and forced his arm up behind him, sending a searing pain through his shoulder to his wrist. Before he could react, he was hauled up against the wall, his forehead grazed and stinging, breath forced from his lungs by the brutal impact. He felt each brick, cold and rough against his face. He couldn't even collect himself to call out before he registered that it was Red Glove-- bitter-eyed, beautiful, and nameless.

"What were you doing with Saskia Szabo?” the man demanded.

Simon tried to open his mouth. His tongue tasted the azoic coldness of stone.

"You were seen with her in the café. What do you want with us?"

"I told you!" Simon said as best he could with his face smashed against the wall. "I want to help!"

"Not bloody likely," the man ground out, wrenching Simon back and spinning him round to face him. His red-gloved hand clutched Simon by the throat and slammed him backward. Simon just stared dumbly. He couldn’t have spoken even if he had known what to say, not with that hand pressing his windpipe hard enough against to choke. "If you're with Saskia Szabo, you're only looking to help yourself. She used to be one of us. Now she's a hand-puppet for the Darkwatch." His eyes glinted in the half-light. "And I mean that _literally. _Most of her old 'friends' are in prison now because of her. Buggered if I'll be next." Simon's head bounced off the bricks as the man punctuated his words with another slam. He let out an involuntary yelp. "Bring her round again and I'll finish you myself."

"She only wants information!" Simon wheezed, praying for a reprieve. "She asked me to find out what your people had got up to. Said if you were going to be arrested, it would already have happened." His ears rang with the sound of a scornful laugh, but at least the grip on his throat loosened enough for him to breathe again.

"So what's in it for you, mate? Money? Or are you set to be the next big star to come out of the State Theatre?"

"That's not it," Simon hissed back, feeling the hot flush of shame climbing his cheeks. He looked away as much as he was able. Down at the end of the alley, a manky old cat flashed out from between two buildings, then vanished in the shadow of a rubbish bin.

The man’s knee brushed against Simon's thigh as he shifted his position. "Not doing it for money, not doing it for fame...What has she got on you, kamerado Le Bon? Dabbling in contraband?"

"Stop," Simon growled, patience frayed by frustration, pain, and fatigue. But his objection only brought the man closer. He forced one of his knees between Simon's legs, pinning him still. The grip on his throat tightened again. Red Glove's overcoat bore a lingering whiff of cologne. A strange thing to notice when being threatened with grievous bodily harm, but there it was: something woodsy and bright, like a memory of better days anchored in the warp and weft of the wool. Simon struggled against the grip. The man could gut him in the street right here and someone walking by might pretend not to see it, just as he had walked by the Darkwatch beatings. No one would involve themselves, no one would interfere. Yet even as his sight began to blur around the edges and the sharp tang of his own sweat overtook the ephemeral remnant of cologne, Simon kept his eyes fixed on the cruel curve of the man's lips, the keen arch of his cheekbones. Getting ready to die, he thought blackly, clawing at the hand on his throat, wasn't much different than getting ready to fuck; the instincts were different, but the animal the same.

"A little scared, are you?" the man asked in a sing-song whisper. "You should be." Simon fought to breathe through his nose, assailed again by the ghost of scent from the man's coat... from the man himself. "Maybe a little turned on?" He pressed hard against Simon, teeth just grazing Simon's jaw, lips hovering and moving away. He felt the transient swipe of a rough cheek against his own.

"Is this what she has on you? That you'd sell your soul to the devil to keep the Darkwatch from finding out that you like to be fucked up against a wall by men you hardly know?" In the brief instant the man's grip faltered, Simon tipped his head back and gasped, pulling in a lungful of air. The cold bricks abraded his scalp, but his eyes came into focus again, and all the blood flooded out of his head, and down... still disoriented and breathless, he neither confirmed nor denied the accusation, but his assailant posed the question again with a long, slow grind against him. Red Glove's cock was as every bit as hard as his own. The hand at Simon’s throat released him only to mold itself to the swell of his erection.

"That's not acting, is it, _Mister_ Le Bon."

"Simon," he rasped.

Warm lips brushed provocatively against his ear, "_Simon,_" the whisper still a taunt, a dare. He pulled back abruptly, giving Simon a push as he stepped away, cold air rushed in to devour the heat that had flared between them there beneath the archway. For all that the man looked cool and controlled, he was breathing roughly, milky haze exploding from his mouth in bursts. He stared long and hard at Simon. One shout would bring the Darkwatch. He could say that Simon had made an advance on him, and Simon would find himself dragged off in the back of a windowless van to parts unknown.

_To a 'regional theatre.'_ His unvoiced laughter tumbled bleakly in his head.

He pleaded with the man; he had nothing left to offer-- and certainly no pride left to speak of. "I have to tell her something. Just a little information. That's all I’m asking for. Please."

The man assessed him with a gimlet eye, but his lips pursed, as if it were some menial matter he was considering, and Simon's life hanging in the balance. Simon met his stare and returned it with his own.

"Come to Claude's tomorrow,” he said at last. “I'll get you sorted."

"Claude's?"

"The café."

Nearly boneless with relief, Simon blew out a breath and sagged a little on his feet. "Thank you."His thanks went unacknowledged as the man turned away without another word. "Wait--" Simon called after him. The man stopped, and after a moment, turned back toward Simon, casually buttoning his overcoat. "What's your name?"

A corner of his mouth jerked upward in a sly grin. "I think you know."

Then he turned around once more, pulled the collar of his overcoat up against his neck, and stalked off into the darkness.

 

 

~ () ~

 

 

"Just after curfew, five days from now."

Kamerada Szabo smiled a mauve, wet-lipped smile. "I knew you would help me. What else did you discover?"

Simon shrugged. "They wouldn't tell me much. I don't think they entirely trust me. I've tried to plead your case, but your reputation precedes you."

She looked down at her hands. "I have made mistakes. I have done things that I regret, but I cannot take them back now. Now I do what I must to make sure my father goes free. Tell me what else you know."

"They've been stockpiling fireworks, but they have no weapons. It seems more like... like a _party _than a demonstration."

"Where is the gathering point?"

"Inside the old printing factory.” He shifted guiltily on his feet. “These aren't bad men, kamerada. They're no danger to anyone. They’re not trying to take down the State, only to have a little freedom. You said no one gets hurt, yeah?"

Heavily shadowed eyes flickered up at him. "I told you, StateSec only wants information. They'll be asked to disperse and the fireworks will be confiscated. That's all. Your new little friends will come to no harm."

He searched her face for guile, but found only the pretty, blank mask of a mannequin. “Is that all you need from me?” He found he had little interest in containing his displeasure. “Am I done with this now?”

“I'm afraid not, kamerado. I'll need you to stay in the village a little while longer. I am sure there is more you could discover if you applied yourself to the task. Remember what is at stake here.”

What, exactly, _was_ at stake? Her father? Her position? His own freedom? Other people's lives? Nothing seemed certain anymore. Nothing seemed real, and nothing – nothing at all – seemed true. The line between honesty and lies, between self-preservation and self-destruction, had grown all but indiscernible. The actor had become indistinguishable from the man.

He went back to his flat, which was just as he had left it-- bed unmade, dinner dishes still in the sink, the Nagel print on the wall behind his sofa just slightly askew. It should have felt homey, but it didn't. He had only been one week away, but that week had changed him irrevocably: it was one thing to hear rumors of abuse and cruelty, another to see an old man thrashed with a blackjack, kneeling in the piss and filth of a gutter to rub away graffiti, and to do absolutely nothing about it. He stripped, leaving his clothing on a pile on the bathroom floor. Eyes closed, forehead to the tiles, he stood in the shower until the hot water ran out, then toweled himself off and crawled into bed. He slept restlessly, and didn't dream.

In the morning, he packed a duffel bag with clothes and a few belongings and headed back to the village. He had a feeling it would be a long time before he saw the city again.

 

 

~ () ~

 

The Darkwatch stormed the printing factory in a stunning display of force.

Men in riot gear shot out the windows and lobbed in canisters of tear gas like hand grenades. Horses stamped and reared, forcing back the curious and the angry alike. Alsatians snarled all fur and fang. A wave of black-clad men swarmed  the building, shotguns in hand, and then a cacophony of shots reverberated from inside the factory walls.

Simon watched from a distance. At his shoulder, John made a sound of disgust.

"You were right about Saskia," Simon admitted. Berthe, the old woman from the café, had gotten hold of a death certificate from the NIH—the _real_ NIH, not the Ministry of Wellness or whatever they were calling it now: Tibor Szabo had died of cancer in 1978. Watching the melee, the hairs on the back of Simon’s neck stood on end, and he was overcome by the absolutely surreal feeling of standing outside of himself, seeing every sure thing he had believed about himself or his life coming undone.

“You won't be able to go back to the city now,” John warned him.

Simon slowly shook his head. “I think I've known I wasn't going back from the first day I got here.”

Eventually, the shock troops began their withdrawal from the building, finding nothing inside but paper and presses and mice. They left a trail of shattered glass, up-ended tables and bullet-riddled walls in their retreat. The Kommandant stood fuming by his car, tall boots polished like black mirrors tapping an angry tattoo on the paving stones.

"Well, you're free of the kamerada now,” John told him. “Even if she had gotten good information, she would have kept you dancing to her tune."

Simon acknowledged him with a nod.

“So.” John shifted awkwardly, rocking back on his heels. “What will you do now?”

“Dunno.” Simon's head felt like an enormous weight on his shoulders. "I've spent my whole life steering clear of politics. I did what they told me to do and I kept my mouth shut.” A sardonic chuckle forced its way out of him. “_That_ clearly didn't work out."

"But that's just it!” John's voice crested passionately, and his hands gestured toward Simon in appeal. “Silence is complicity! You're in it now, whether you planned it or not. There's no turning back, Simon.”

Simon watched with dizzying detachment as mounted guards pushed their horses through the crowd, scattering people in all directions. “I’ve had enough silence."

John gave him a look of empathy. “For what it's worth, I'm glad. We can use your help-- for real this time.”

“It's not like I've anything on my schedule at the moment,” Simon grumbled. “Consider me all yours.”

The offhand remark triggered a speculative look. “All right, then. Lay low tonight, and I'll come round in the morning.”

Simon nodded, and turned away from the final shouts and scurries of the fray.

 

Later, he lay on the creaking bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling, trying to reconcile his mind to the new reality of his life. He looked around the little room at the rusty water stain on the wall and the torn shade in the window. Three shirts had been hanging in the wardrobe when he first arrived, none of them his. A pair of trousers had been abandoned in a hamper, belonging to a man somewhat shorter and stouter than he.  The writing desk bore burn marks along its edge as if someone had, on more than one occasion, balanced a burning cigarette there, and the lap drawer contained a stranger’s detritus: pencil shavings, an old biro with dried ink gumming up the tip and the end worried between anonymous teeth, envelopes-- the sort you had to buy now, the ones that didn't seal. On the wall above the desk, the deckled corner of a photograph remained tacked to the plaster revealing the whiter wall behind it where the rest of the picture had been torn away.  Cigarette smoke had left an adumbral outline of its border.

Who had the last tenant been? What had become of him? Had he simply found another place to live? Perhaps he had been assigned a job in another village, or in the city center...or perhaps he had been taken against his will. John was right; silence was complicity. He regretted that he had kept silent for so long.

When he slept, he dreamed that the Darkwatch was at his door. One of the men's faces looked like John's. He woke in a cold sweat with a feeling in his stomach hovering somewhere between desire and despair.

 

~ () ~

 

A few hours later, the clatter of pebbles on the window roused him. He rubbed his eyes and shook off his dream fatigue to put his feet on the cold floorboards. With one finger, he pulled back the torn shade and peered out. Down on the street below, John stood with his fists shoved deep in his coat pockets, shoulders drawn up against the cold. Simon dressed sluggishly and met him outside.

"C'mon,” John said, tossing his head in the direction of the café. “Enough brooding. We've got work to do."

He brought Simon into the cellar. A stack of wine crates had been moved across the room revealing a computer terminal and a radio transmitter. Claude was soldering something to a circuit board; Berthe sat bathed in the sickly green glow of the computer screen while lines of unintelligible code scrolled by.

“Meet the staff of New Moon Radio.”

Simon took it all in. Pirate radio? An absurd notion, but one Simon found intriguing. So this was what they had been keeping from him. “Impressive,” he admitted, “but what do you use for an antenna? Surely that's something the Darkwatch would notice.”

“The boys are taking care of that. The Darkwatch won't be on the look-out for kites.” John's smile was as excited as it was enigmatic. "But we won't have a very strong signal, so we'll have to set up repeaters."

"We, meaning you and I."

John thumped him on the shoulder. “Thought you could use a little adventure to break you in.”

"I don't know anything about radio."

“You're an actor. Improvise."

Simon smiled. “But I’m not a _good_ actor, remember?”

John winked at him. “You’re good enough. Let’s go.”

 

 

Since the incident at the printing factory, the Darkwatch had doubled their numbers in the village. Everywhere Simon turned, he saw guards and barbed wire barricades.

John cursed under his breath. “This isn't going to be as easy as I hoped.”

“You didn't sign on for 'easy,'” Simon chided him.

They scaled chain link fences and made a mad dash through a blighted garden to reach a disused textile mill, and set up the first repeater on the roof there, the rusted fire ladders threatening to give way beneath their feet. Then, they legged it back through the town by backstreets and alleyways until they had reached the eastern edge of the village; the second repeater went up in the abandoned playground of the primary school.

“Now's where things get a bit sticky,” John advised.

“Why? Where's the last one going?”

John licked his lips and swallowed. “We need three points at an equal distance from each other for this to work...”

“Where, John?”

“At the base of the guard tower.”

Simon said nothing, hoping that John was having him on, but when John remained silent, he muttered a string of imprecations. With a confidence he sure as hell didn't feel, he said, “Well, steady on, then.”

If they had though it a challenge to get from the mill to the schoolyard without attracting notice, they found it doubly so when they left the schoolyard for the guard tower, a relic of the fortress which had once allowed the citizens to keep watch for enemies without, now used by the Darkwatch to keep watch over the citizens within.

Painstaking progress brought them to a street too narrow for anything more than foot traffic, running parallel to the village wall. Quietly, carefully, they made their way along at a creep.  A man leaned out of his window at the most inopportune time and saw them. They froze like hares. The man looked right at them, at the repeater in their hands, and then looked away.  After a moment, he lit a cigarette, and leaned out the window, arms folded across the sill. He looked casually down the street, exhaled a plume of smoke, then looked up the other way, flicking his ash on the street below. For a brief second, he met their eyes again and gave a quick nod.  All clear.

Simon's heart hammered in his chest. After edging further down, as close to the tower as they could possibly go without stepping right into the guards' line of sight, John scrambled up a garbage skip. He winced when it rumbled beneath his feet. Simon braved a look around the corner. Three guards were leaning against the side of the building, gabbing amongst themselves.

“Hurry!”

John nodded without looking at him as he picked away at the mortar on the old wall. It gave readily to his prying hands, and he wedged the repeater between the loose stones as best he could. “Got it!”

He clambered off the skip, but as he did, a stone and more of mortar came free from the wall and crashed down down on the lid.

Simon held his breath.

The bark of a dog split the tentative silence, joined, then, by another.

"Shit!" John hissed

Simon slid to the corner where the wall abruptly ended and peered around.  Two Alsatians charged on the end of their leads, barking and snapping, pulling their handlers right toward them. "Oh, Christ."

"C'mon!" John hissed. "If they find the repeaters--"

_Bloody hell._ "--Which way?"

  
"Back toward your place." John's voice held an edge of desperation, and for the first time, Simon looked at his face and saw fear. "Go!"

The word galvanized him and he ran, John at his heels, toward the guesthouse. The barking of the dogs grew louder, joined now by human voices.

"Haltu! Ĉesu!! Stop where you are!”

“Keep going!” John hissed. “Turn left!”

Shrill metallic whistles rent the air, and the clatter of jackboots on cobbles rose up and echoed on all sides. They rocketed toward the north quarter and turned a sharp left into a dank alley, Simon's feet nearly flying out from under him on the piss-wet stones. John's arm shot out and gave him a push to help him right himself.

That had been a mistake. At the first cross-street, a guard stepped into view, and it was only blind luck that he was looking the other way. Simon lurched to a stop, arms spread for balance, and to keep John from barreling through him. John stopped short and made a volte-face. He grabbed Simon's sleeve and all but jerked him off his feet in an effort to redirect their momentum in the other direction.

Up ahead, the din of a gathering storm closed in around them.

“Oh God.” 

Hearing unadulterated fear in a voice Simon had come to associate with sheer bravado chilled him, and for the first time, it occurred to him that they might not make it.

They backtracked to the mouth of alley and tore arse back the way they came, dashing across a road behind the backs of a pair of guards. They reached a narrow backstreet littered with broken glass where the security lights had been smashed out, and Simon saw a recessed doorway half-way down.

They had come within spitting distance of his boarding house. “Down here!” Simon hissed. But John faltered, looking back over his shoulder.

On the street behind them, a woman's voice called out: “I saw a man running toward the rectory!”

The rectory lay in exactly the opposite direction from which they had come. A stranger had come to their aid for a second time that day. Hope flickered, then took light.

“John! Here!”

He grabbed John by the back of the collar and pulled him into the doorway, pressing them both as tightly against it as he could, as if he might will them into invisibility.

“The saw us,” John was muttering. “We're dead.”

“Shut it!” Simon hissed, but John's eyes were glazed with panic.

“Oh, God. We're fucking dead.”

Impulsively, Simon grabbed him by the lapels and banged him up against the door. His head made a thudding sound as it ricocheted off the wood, but the pain seemed to bring him back into line. He stared at Simon with wide eyes, licking lips that had gone dry.

Adrenaline sang in Simon's veins, his senses sharpened by their flight. He had never felt so terrified... and he had never felt more alive. Whether it was to shut John up or just to give vent to the surge of energy electrifying him, he surged forward, swallowing John's words in his mouth, forcing him into silence with lips and teeth and tongue. John stiffened for a moment, then wrested his arms free and grabbed Simon’s head in both hands, grunting when their teeth clicked and clashed. Simon could hear his own rabbiting heart, and John's, stuttering like machine gun fire, an erratic counterpoint to the wet sound of a deep kiss.

Simon felt that everything had been illuminated; that the hazy focus of his vision had become crystal clear. This is what they were fighting for, wasn't it? To live, to love, to fight, to fuck, to stand up against the fist that would prostrate them, and to scream at the top of their lungs...

On the streets ahead of them and behind, the clack of feet diminished. Then, the sound receded, and the barking of the dogs settled into a series of half-attentive woofs. Simon pulled away from and cocked his ear.

“They're gone,” he whispered. John looked at him breathless and dazed, fresh color rising in his cheeks. “Let's keep moving.”

A few more turns through the labyrinth of streets and they had reached Simon's lodgings, winded and tightly wound but without the shadow of Darkwatch on their tails. John looked up at Simon's window, then down at Simon.

“Come in side, will you?” Simon badgered. “We're tempting fate by standing around here.”

John nodded, and let Simon lead him up the stairs.

Yet when the door closed behind them, it was John with the grabby hands and the hungry mouth, tugging at Simon's coat, at his shirt, at his trousers, nipping at his jaw and drawing his tongue over the hollow of Simon's throat. The arthritic bed springs groaned and sighed beneath their sinking weight. John's hands were like ice on his skin, but the rest of his body was warm... was hot... was heavy and alive and humming like a live wire above him. Static and white noise resolved into sound, into song. Two voices swirled around each other in the fading light.

Afterwards, they lay in a tight tangle, the bed far too small to hold them comfortably. But Simon didn't want to move yet, didn't want to let go of the security, however transitory, of having another human close by. John didn't seem any more inclined to move than he. Ignoring cramped legs and awkward positions, they watched daylight faltering outside through the torn window shade.

“What now?” Simon asked him.

“The sun goes down, the kite goes up. We make a racket and divert as many Darkwatch thugs as we can into the village square. Then Claude turns the microphones on, and New Moon Radio goes on the air.”

"And what does New Moon Radio actually broadcast?"

"Us.  All of us. The singing. The shouting. The few moments of freedom we're going to have before the Darkwatch shuts us down."

"It's a lot to ask of a few men and a kite. Will anyone even hear it?"

John rolled to his side and looked down at Simon, his lashes casting a fringe of shadow over his cheekbones. He cocked one eyebrow, silently chastising Simon's doubts.

"There's a whole big world out there beyond the walls,” John reminded him, “And they want freedom as much as we do. We're just the spark, the catalyst: even if only one person hears us, maybe it'll give them the courage to speak out. And that person will give another person courage. The revolution is going to happen slowly. It's going to happen one voice at a time.

"C'mon," he whispered, untangling himself from the covers. Simon reached out and touched his hip as he rose, the skin bed-warm and smooth beneath his fingertips. “It's nearly time. It'll be dark soon.”

They dressed, and Simon pulled back the window shade for them to look outside. Twilight had settled in a hush over the village, and the sky bore no sign of even the barest sliver of moon.

John's fingers threaded through his and squeezed. "Ready?"

Simon’s whole world sat poised on the edge of an explosion. The next few hours might just bring the end of everything. Or maybe the beginning. He looked at John standing tall and cocky and eager beside him.

"Yeah," he said. "I am."

 

 


End file.
